The Scaremonger

1/48th scale Aeroclub Avro Vulcan B.Mk2 multimedia kit. It's been a year now since I've finally got it, YAY!

Clever! The Flanker community here on ARC ought to rejoice in the bliss of having members like Chris and Ken aboard. Cheers, Henka

Dieter, your photography is just as much as awesome as your modelling skills! What camera and settings have you used? Completely flabbergasted, mate! Cheers, H

Nice work, Calum! Your SHar is looking awesome. I bet is going to be XZ451, huh? You've got to beat Pappy to that one. Cheers, H

Nice techniques! I've always used an old circle template of those used by technical artists. It's got several sizes of circles on it to use according to the size I need to work with.

That's interesting! What was of all those Meteor Productions masters after the company went East, I wonder? Were them all destroyed or do they still dwell somewhere? It'd be a blast if they were used once again.

That's quite odd... There should be no raised area like that in the wing. Sure you're using the FRS.1 upper wing half on the kit?

Best way to achieve conical shapes to me was to try for trapezoidal cuts first, where the upper and lower cuts of the trapezezoides weren't straigh but more like round. I try these cuts on paper first to then see how they wrap around the tank - for instance - and then, provided they work okay, I replicate them on the BMF sheet. Also, you've got to work little by little; piece by piece, as trying to cover for every segment of the surface which is defined by panel lines. It might not seem like, but a tune which always helps me out while BMFoiling tanks:

Now that either Tan Model or Hypersonic Models will release a 1/48th scale SR-71, I wish for the following kits: Morane-Saulnier MS-760 Paris Fokker F-28 Mk-3000 Avro Vulcan B.Mk2 Hawker-Siddeley HS-125 All of them in 1/48th scale and injection-moulded, please?

Dying of anticipation here, Ilias.

Well, I'm pretty much done for, then...

Hi, Woody! It's okay, mate. Not nearly offended by your comments; on the contrary. Well, yes, I guess every modeller gets a tad obsessed with certain type of aircraft once in a while. I did it after having learnt what the issues on it were - and if they were worth fixing. Then lots of aftermarkets came out for the 1/48 Sled as of late. It's been the case with the Sled for me when I came across modellers who showed interest in going beyond a simple build, like Nimrod and one another Italian modeller who modified the whole forward fuselage and whose name fails me right now.

Oh, no, no; I don't know that either. I was just kidding, suggesting both you and Calum should get together for a build, and most prolly you were on one side in Aussieland and Calum far away on the other one...

Nice! Would you mind sharing them, please? You know I've been working in and out on the 1/48 Italeri Sled myself for quite a long spell now; kind of what Nimrod77 had done to his build several years back here on ARC. Thing is I don't think the plans I've got depict the OBC nose rather than they depict the ASARS one. I've noticed that the OBC nose is the most elusive to reproduce. There's this kink on the nose that I was completely unaware of, which gives that strange look to the Habu. It's most noticeable from an angle than any other angle, including the head-on view, in which you've

Bloody Oath, Pappy...!!! What's up, mate? Sharkey's mount, huh? Nice, very nice work so far. Those nozzles look spot on. Mate Calum's working on the very same kit; perhaps you two could get together? (yeh, one's out in Perth and the other's out in Brisbane... ). Will be following both of you. Cheers, H

Oh, I was brought up on this one...

Guess it's the way of the future, Christian. Had I been paranoid, I'd have thought someone's just beaten me to it. I'm soon opening a modelling store down here which is only oriented to the 1/48th scale aircraft market; anything from kits to tools and stuff (reference material, paint, cement, aftermarkets, decals; everything just for the quarter scale airplane modeller. Name of the store will be 1/48. I'm quite interested in that link; thanks! Cheers, Henka Kuovalainen

Bloody Oath, Calum! I'm following with delight. Today I was comparing the fuselage on this kit to that of the Airfix FRS.1 and the Monogram AV-8A. No way I could compare them to the Tamiya FRS.1, which I also have in the stash. Enough Harriers. The only thing which is interchangeable among them all is the windshield! Cheers, C! Henka. PS: What's in the Big Ed set?

Matt, this is TigerBlack's build on Z5; he says to have used a mix of Akan & Vallejo for the camo, + Alclad & AK for the metal shines. Zone Five Forum - Workbench

That's a nice nose job you did there, Woody! It looks quite a lot as the Optical Bar Camera nose assembly. Where did you get the profile to achieve this shape? Cheers, Henka

I can't insist enough on this; the washout is indeed present on the Hobby Boss Flanker kits. You've just got to check for mild warpage amidst the wing chord of some examples. Here's good proof of it:

Erik, I think you missed the sign which read: "Vikings ought to keep away from BUFFs, much less, making people underneath wet by tilting their wings!"

I guess he used the top view of camo illustrations for that?

Matt, I wholly agree that the Hobby Boss Flanker is a lifetime better than the Academy one. I think that the only thing which should matter correcting is the wrong angle of the main landing gear bays, and only just. I ain't a rivet counter; it's just that I was stretching the Academy kit until the HB kit came along, for which I had bought a good plethora of materials and stuff, so now that I've got a fuselage that is the correct length, and also that I found some transversal profiles of both the LERX and the spine, I thought I might as well go to town with the Hobby Boss kit. Ju

Hi, Chris! Thanks for the input. Indeed, the Fairy-Hobby piece was devised to correct the clear pieces on the Academy kit, which suffered from a certain degree of fuselage shortage. However, Yufei corrected both the angle of the windshield - which was too littke on the Academy kit, plus the canopy height and rear. I've got both the Fairy-Hobby set and the Hobby Boss kit; thing is, the Fairy-Hobby set requires that you cut out styrene at both the front and back of the cockpit area, which corrects some of the rear section of the canopy which is wrong in the Academy kit. Now, the H